


To Serve Woman (explicit)

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bloodplay, Cannibalism, F/F, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Minor Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:08:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vastra and Jenny take what appears to be a routine case. But the stakes are higher than they had imagined and their relationship may never be the same.</p><p>Note: this is the original, hard-R-to-X-rated, stand-alone version. It's shorter, sexier, and more violent, and it has no relation to my ongoing series of stories starring Vastra and Jenny. As a result, it's a very different work, so it's staying up, even as I post the new version.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Serve Woman (explicit)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for a lot of things: violence, blood, discussions of cannibalism, minor character death. This is definitely a darker fic, so be warned. But when you have one character who eats sentient beings of a certain species and has a wife/servant/friend/lover from that same species, well, there's a lot going on there to explore. 
> 
> Originally posted at http://eleventy-kink.livejournal.com/365.html?thread=1718381#t1718381
> 
> Title a riff on the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man.
> 
> See end notes for spoilers.

“Mr. Henderson to see you, ma'am.” Jenny curtseyed. A heavyset, well-dressed man entered the parlour, hat in hand. Vastra gestured subtly, and he took a seat opposite Vastra. Jenny swept in with teapot and cups and saucers before settling into the corner of the room where she could observe and overhear the conversation without being readily noticed by Henderson. 

“Madame Vastra, I hope you will forgive me, but I wish to move directly to my business with you.” She inclined her head slightly. “I am the agent of a meat processing concern: some slaughtering, some packing, a bit of sausage-making...” He seemed to realize he was rambling and caught himself. “A new competitor has moved into a nearby facility, and unusual noises have been coming from within. Nobody goes in or out. The company I represent believes they may have some new and more efficient method or practice. My employer would like to retain your unique services to find out what these upstarts are doing, and how they are doing it, and otherwise... inconvenience them.” He leaned forward. “We would, of course, be willing to pay handsomely.”

Vastra correspondingly leaned back, closing her eyes and steepling her hands. “If you would be so good as to withdraw to the sitting room, I shall consider your proposal; I shall not detain you long.” Once he had left, Jenny slouched into the chair he had abandoned and Vastra pulled up her veil. “Industrial espionage and sabotage,” she spat with more metaphorical than actual venom.

“Not the most honorable profession, but I suppose it pays the bills.” Vastra nodded reluctantly. “I'll draw up the standard contract, then?”

“Yes, Jenny; that would be wonderful.” She pulled the veil back down. “At least this should not be too complicated.”

***

“Strax, mind the carriage and stand lookout.” Vastra resisted the urge to immediately destroy the deception of a well-to-do woman and her servant out for an evening walk by leaping from the carriage into a ready crouch, and instead stepped down, taking care to keep her visage concealed beneath her veil and hat, permitting herself the use of Jenny's arm as a brace. “Simple observation tonight, my love,” she whispered as Strax muttered something about laser whips. Jenny nodded and gave her arm a squeeze before releasing it and following at an appropriate distance. The pair walked through the foggy London night, tracing a tangled circuit which would have appeared random to any but the most diligent observer but in fact passed by the industrial building in question several times from every angle. 

“Ma'am?” Jenny whispered, as sickly, yellow-green light spilled from the gaps in the boarded-up windows. “That doesn't look human. Or sound human.”

“Or smell human,” Vastra agreed, though the smell of blood from the meat-packing district was an awful distraction. “Come, my sweet; we shall have to pay a return visit tomorrow once we have traded our dresses for our hunting clothes.”

***

They return the next night, concealed beneath heavy cloaks: Silurian armor, catsuits, swords, and all. Jenny produces a lockpick, and a moment later they are inside. 

It is Jenny who first places what is so very wrong about the inside of the warehouse. The alien machinery, of course, is almost second nature to them at this point. Not clever Vastra, but Jenny, Jenny Flint the maid, who handles the errands and the buying and spends time at the butcher's, who notices... “Ma'am...none of these cuts of meat look familiar.” She is interrupted by what she sees as she turns the corner: a human torso, separated from the head and limbs, lying on a table. “Oh..oh, no.” Jenny, who has been Vastra's faithful companion through dark adventures, who has taken dozens of lives in battle, is suddenly sick, and she empties herself onto the crude floor, over and over, until there is nothing left. Even her eyes seem hollowed out. “Ma'am?”

“Yes, Jenny?”

“Permission to kill everything that breathes in this shambles?”

“Permission granted.”

***

For them, it is the work of a quarter-hour to repay the slaughter in kind. They leave one of the fat, hideous, orange-haired aliens alive long enough to interrogate him before Vastra slits his throat. “A kinder death than an Androgum deserves,” she declares, wiping her sword on the bed where her most recent victim had slept. He had confirmed that none of the Androgums had dared leave the establishment for fear of being caught, preferring to negotiate with humans to obtain their foul livestock. “An Androgum lives only to slake his hunger; one can only imagine the motives of their co-conspirators.” They gather and pack up all of the books and papers the aliens had possessed in hopes of finding a clue to tracking the humans down: while the job they had been hired to do is done, they have much more yet to do. Jenny kindles a fire, and they leave, watching the remains of the anonymous victims be commemorated to the sky. 

“At least we could save some of them,” Jenny notes, more to console herself than anything. Men, women, children, infants: kept alive, presumably to be fattened up. Still, she ignores Strax's belligerent greeting, and sobs for almost all of the carriage ride home. 

***

“I would not have thought the prospect of eating your own kind would have posed such an upsetting tableau to you,” Vastra began, once they were undressed and in bed, yet not ready for sleep. “Especially not given my own eating habits.”

Jenny's eyes are dry now, and she rests her head on Vastra's shoulder. “It doesn't really, ma'am. Just...” She lies silently, breath caught in her mouth. “When you do it, it's a murderer, usually in a fair fight. Well,” and she allows herself a smile, her good nature unable to be suppressed for long, “as fair as a fight with you on one side. But that,” she shivers, and Vastra draws her closer as though she is capable of heating her warm-blooded wife. “That was a massacre. Of people. Real, living, thinking, loving people. You're people, and I'm people...but someone who could do that, or the killers we've hunted...they're not people.” Vastra smiles, somber, but always astounded at how wise Jenny can be despite her lack of formal education (a lack she is, admittedly, still trying to remedy). She isn't quite sure what to say when Jenny surprises her once again.

“Vastra?” The use of her proper name is shocking enough. “Will you eat me? If I should die before you?”

“Jenny, I...” Vastra stammers, and though her love looks her in the eyes, there are no answers there. 

“Because if I'm going to be dead anyway—goodness, we have gotten onto a macabre turn, ma'am!” and Jenny laughs “then I think I'd like to know that I fixed you one last meal, so to speak.”

“I will think about it,” Vastra replies, still uneasy. She knows she is likely to outlive Jenny by a fair margin if chance or the gods do not intervene, and this hangs somewhat guiltily over her at the best of times. “But please, do not raise the issue again.” Jenny nods, and they kiss, and settle fitfully to sleep.

***

The next morning, still in their dressing gowns, they pore through the papers they have stolen. Mr. Henderson stops by to say that his employer has wired the funds to them, with an additional bonus for taking care of the matter so thoroughly and promptly. They pawn him off on Strax who deals with him as perfunctorily as is still within the bounds of politeness. Much of the information appears unhelpful, but they sift through it anyway, making piles of possible leads. Vastra's eyes widen when she opens one particular tome.

“What is it, ma'am?”

“A cookbook. Designed for humans.” She coughs. “As the primary foodstuff, that is.”

Jenny scowls. “Throw it in with the rest of the garbage, then.”

“But it might come in handy! Say what you will about the Androgums, but they are true gourmets. Eating criminals raw is all well and good, but stewed or roasted might make a nice change!” 

She can't tell if Vastra is being serious, Jenny realizes. “Are you going to eat me?” she asks at last. Well, two can play at that game.

“Jenny, please!”

“Are you going to eat me!?” she shouts. “Not when I'm old and dried-up, but while I'm still young and juicy?” She pulls off her dressing gown and stands before Vastra, naked. “Is that what this is about?”

In a flash, Vastra is behind her, long tongue out and tasting her, teeth nipping at her throat, grazing the skin. “Is that what you want?” she hisses. “Is that all you think you are to me?” One clawed hand digs into Jenny's breast. “Just a piece of meat? Do you not yet know that you are worth whole worlds to me, my beautiful, precious wife? That I would trade all I have and more for your sake? That I would gladly go back into the darkness and never see the light of day touch my home for you? That I would—that I have!—forsaken my people to be with you?” Vastra stops to draw breath, realizes she has left thin red lines all over Jenny's body, and, more, that Jenny is moaning, soaking wet. “That I love you, Jenny?” She releases her, and Jenny sinks to the ground on her side, fingers between her legs, finishing up an orgasm. 

“I don't know what I thought was more exciting,” she admits once she can speak properly again. “When I thought you might actually eat me...or when I knew you would never.” She blushes. “Not that I'd want you to actually,” she coughs, delicately, “apart from the way we already do, but to think of you just on the brink of losing control, Vastra...” 

Vastra is on the floor as well, curled around Jenny with a blanket pulled over the two of them. She nods. “I will keep that firmly in mind, my sweet.” She pauses. “Shall I keep the cookbook, then?”

Vastra can feel Jenny blush again; it makes her skin so divinely hot. “Yes, I think so, ma'am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, Jenny doesn't die.
> 
> It's a cookbook!


End file.
